Diplomats working in Nepali missions in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have said that the missions in the destinations must be labour centric. It concerns citizens, so the major job of the missions is to protect Nepali migrant workers, they said during the National Conference on Migration, today.

About 2.7 million Nepalis — two million documented and an estimated 700,000 undocumented — are working in GCC countries — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. More than 200,000 Nepali women are in the informal

sector job in the destinations, according to the UN Women report 2011.

A large number of Nepali migrants have been cheated, exploited and abused in GCC countries, therefore diplomatic missions in those countries must adopt ‘labour diplomacy’, said Nepali ambassador to Saudi Arabia Udaya Raj Pandey. “The gravity of the problems that Nepali workers face is very high in GCC countries due to the Kafala (sponsorship) system,” he said.

The Kafala system comes from the Arabian custom of temporarily granting protection to strangers. But today, employers confiscate the passports of workers and exploit them under the shadow of the system. Human Rights Watch, in its 2011 report, had mentioned the Kafala system as ‘modern day slavery’.

According to Pandey, the situation of Nepalis in Saudi Arabia is the worst due to lack of labour rights for informal sector workers. “We have rescued more than 13,000 Nepalis from jails in the last two years,” he said, adding that the embassy sent home more than 500 housemaids and 635 dead bodies in the period. The embassy has solved about 1,270 labour cases that included more than 25,000 workers, he added.

It all shows the grave situation of Nepali migrants in Saudi Arabia and the situation in other GCC countries is no better, he claimed. Therefore, the government must increase worker friendly staff and labour attachés in the Middle East, added Pandey.

A diplomat from Kuwait, Madhuban Poudel added that undocumented women migrant workers have been a major challenge for diplomatic missions in Kuwait City. “Every week we deal with more than 30 cases related to exploitation and abuse. Most cases concern housemaids, so our major job is to handle those cases and rescue them,” he said.

According to him, the Nepali embassy in Kuwait City

has rescued more than 2,247 housemaids since 2010. “We made 902 rescues in 2011, 812 in 2012 and 186 till April 2013,” he said, adding that Nepali diplomatic missions in GCC countries should build a better network to solve worker

related cases. The government must add labour attachés for it, Poudel said.

The government has decided to establish diplomatic

missions in Oman and Bahrain where about 40,000 and

60,000 Nepalis are working. The embassies will be established within the current fiscal year 2012-13.

Published on: 11 May 2013 | The Himalayan Times